Studying at Brockton High leads to fun and games for honor roll students

Susan Szachowicz

Thursday

May 27, 2010 at 12:01 AMMay 27, 2010 at 11:59 PM

More than 1,000 honor roll students participate in special assembly.

More than 1,000 students streamed into the auditorium during the last period of the day Friday in anticipation of what was to come.
They had heard rumors, they speculated and they were excited.
Rewarding students for doing the right thing is an important part of our mission in Boxer Country. Because we value academic excellence, we acknowledge those students who are working hard and getting good grades by arranging honor roll assemblies. These assemblies have become legendary, and according to our students, Friday’s honor roll assembly was the best one yet.
Our amazing drum line entered the auditorium and brought the crowd to its feet. Next, our talented jazz band, under the direction of Mr. Macrina, had the crowd cheering. And then the games began.
One evening when channel surfing I saw the game show “Minute to Win It,” in which contestants have one minute to complete a goofy task. I knew we could replicate this for our honor roll assembly by selecting students out of the audience to play side by side with our administrative team.
Associate Principal LeFort and I kicked it off with the ping pong sandwich game. Five honor roll students played along with Ms. LeFort and me as we had a minute to bounce a ping pong ball onto a piece of bread covered in Fluff.
Next, Red Housemaster Sharon Wolder and Assistant Matt Beals and their five contestants had the audience screaming with laughter as they had empty tissue boxes filled with ping pong balls strapped to their waists and by jumping around they had to get all the ping pong balls out of the box.
Green Housemaster Matt Crowley and Assistant Bill Millerick and their team of students had to unfurl a roll of toilet paper without using their hands and just spinning around in circles.
One of the biggest messes of the day came when Azure Housemaster Mike Thomas and Assistant Cindy Burns led their student team on their challenge. They had a minute to empty a full tissue box, one tissue at a time, with one hand only.
And Yellow Housemaster Jean Ryan and Assistant Ralph Liberatore and their student team had to roll ping pong balls along a tape measure into a coffee can.
Other games provided lots of laughter and lots of prizes.
When we were planning this activity, I contacted one of our business partners, Modell’s, to see if it could help us with prizes. A huge shout-out to Eric Friedberg and Modell’s for their amazing generosity. Thanks to Modell’s, every student in attendance received a gift card, every participant called out of the audience to play received a hat and athletic bag, and the winners threw a giant dice to win an additional $75 gift card. Modell’s contribution totaled nearly $5,000.
But even after “Minute to Win It,” this assembly still wasn’t over. A BHS honor roll assembly would not be complete without a Michael Jackson tribute. Senior honor roll student Chris Louis stepped on stage to perform a Michael Jackson impression that would have made you believe Michael himself was in the house. And all of us on the administrative team were his back-up dancers to “Beat It.”
The most comical scenes were the ones that the audience never saw. In the week prior to this event, Chris attempted to teach his pitiful back-up dance group, my administrative team, how to be his back-up dancers. His patience was tested by our pathetic attempts to learn how to spin and moon walk.
If our rehearsal sessions were filmed, we probably could have won the prize on America’s Funniest Home Videos. After our performance to “Beat It,” a group of our honor roll chorus members led the entire audience in singing the contemporary version of “We Are the World.”
As the audience streamed out at the end of this extravaganza, our honor roll students were still laughing, but more importantly saying that they would be sure to be on the honor roll every term. And as principal I would love to run out of seats in the auditorium!
Congratulations to everyone on the honor roll!

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